THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ; Hussein Is Sentenced to Death by Hanging

Published: November 6, 2006

Three and a half years after American troops captured Baghdad and ended the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi court set up to judge the brutalities of his 24 years in power found him guilty on Sunday of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death by hanging.

An automatic appeal of the death sentence will delay it, but some Iraqi judicial officials privately held out the possibility that Mr. Hussein could go to the gallows in a matter of months, perhaps before next spring. That may depend on behind-the-scenes maneuvering by Mr. Hussein's embattled successors in Iraq's new government, who have already shown that they are not hesitant to pressure judges in the case.

For Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the death sentence was a welcome relief from bad news on the war front and appeared to be an opportunity to score gains with his own fractured constituency of Shiite religious groups. Mr. Maliki, who has said that he favors the swift execution of Mr. Hussein, appeared on television to proclaim that the former Iraqi ruler got what he deserved.

The case that brought death sentences for Mr. Hussein and two other defendants, including one of his half-brothers, focused on the ruthless repression of a small Shiite town north of Baghdad after what was said to be an assassination attempt against Mr. Hussein in 1982. Judged against the sweep of terror under Mr. Hussein, the case was a narrow one, involving the execution of 148 men and youths from the town of Dujail, and what the court found to have been a ''widespread and systematic'' persecution of the town's inhabitants in the years that followed.

The contrasting reaction to the verdicts, in the heavily fortified courthouse in Baghdad and across Iraq, was a testament to the bitter divisions sown by the toppling of Mr. Hussein in April 2003, and to the country's spiraling descent since then into a near-anarchy of insurgency and sectarian killing. From Mr. Hussein and his unreconciled supporters among Iraq's Sunni minority, there was an explosion of anger.

Among the newly empowered Shiite majority, there was an eruption of joy, and volleys of celebratory gunfire from pistols and automatic weapons.

As the chief judge read out the death sentence, a defiant but exhausted-looking Mr. Hussein shouted: ''Long live the people! Long live the nation! Down with the occupiers! Down with the spies!'' Thrusting his right forefinger into the air, then raising a heavily thumbed Koran with his left hand, he repeatedly chanted the traditional Muslim invocation, ''God is Great!'' As two court bailiffs moved to hold his arms down, he called one ''stupid'' and demanded, ''Don't twist my arm.'' Then he mocked the judge, Raouf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman. ''Go to hell, you and the court!'' he said.

The verdicts were greeted with a similar divide in opinion outside Iraq. President Bush described the trial of Mr. Hussein before the Iraqi High Tribunal, the court set up to try the top officials of the ousted government, as ''a milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law.''

The reaction was negative from some in other Arab countries and from Western legal-monitoring and rights groups, which had been critical of procedures at the trial, saying they were loaded in favor of ''victor's justice'' and that the Bush administration should have insisted that an international court hear the cases.

Before the verdicts, Mr. Maliki had imposed an around-the-clock curfew on Baghdad and other regions with heavy Sunni populations or a volatile mix of Sunnis and Shiites, including Mr. Hussein's hometown, Tikrit. Iraqi security forces were placed on high alert and American aircraft -- unpiloted reconnaissance drones flying low, and fighter jets roaring high above -- crossed the capital. Around the courthouse, in the former headquarters of Mr. Hussein's Baath Party, American troops tightened the already formidable cordon that has protected the trial, with turret gunners in dirt-brown Humvees watching all approaching traffic intently.

But the curfew was widely flouted. In Shiite areas, including Sadr City in northeastern Baghdad, residents flooded the streets, whooping and dancing and honking car horns. Abdul Razzaq Hassan, 43, a casual laborer, shouted his exuberance down a telephone line, straining to make himself heard over the throng. ''This is a very great happiness! I will never forget this day!'' he said.

Mr. Hassan said two of his brothers had been killed by Mr. Hussein, one in 1982 and the other in 1988. Both were members of the Islamic Dawa Party, one of the Shiite religious groups decimated in Mr. Hussein's purges. The party was the principal target of the repression in Dujail. Now, through their election sweep in January, the Shiite groups control the government. ''Because of this happiness,'' Mr. Hassan said, speaking of his lost brothers, ''I can let them go.''

But a grim and retributive mood settled over predominantly Sunni areas. Fighting broke out between gunmen and Iraqi soldiers in Adhamiya in northeastern Baghdad, said an Interior Ministry official, but American forces suppressed the violence. Police and military authorities reported no other outbreaks of major violence and no deaths.